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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 19 2018, @04:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-they're-buying...trucks? dept.

Phys.org:

General Motors has announced it's shuttering five production facilities and killing six vehicle platforms by the end of 2019 as it reallocates resources towards self-driving technologies and electric vehicles.

[...] North American car production hit 17.5 million vehicles in 2016, and dropped marginally to 17.2 million in 2017. Interesting, but perhaps not significant.

More telling are changes in driver behaviour. In North America, for example, fewer teens are getting driver's licences. In 1983, 92 per cent of teens were licensed, while by 2014, that number had dropped to 77 per cent. In Germany, the number of new licences issued to drivers aged 17 to 25 has dropped by 300,000 over the last 10 years.

Are we over our love affair with cars?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:32PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:32PM (#776315) Journal
    I see this as a sign of increasing immobility of the public (another is a decline [latimes.com] in the number of people who move). For a historical comparison, a similar decline in mobility preceded the crisis of the third century in the Roman empire and an eventual transition to feudalism over the next few centuries. I think a good portion of the present situation is driven by real estate prices, secondarily by plentiful and restrictive professional licensing.
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